Stuck
by roktavor
Summary: And then, Kurapika makes a very damning mistake – though he doesn't know it at the time – by asking: "Could you hold the door open? As you've experienced, it sometimes locks on its own when shut." (High school AU wherein Leorio and Kurapika wind up locked in a closet together.)


**A/N:** I meant to work on a completely different fic – like, different fandom, different premise, everything – but when I opened the document this is what my fingers produced instead, uh,

...Since I've been fighting through a serious writing block lately, I figured I better let them have at it. :'D

* * *

**Stuck**

When Kurapika opens the door to the supply closet, the last thing he expects to see is another student – let alone one who's fast asleep.

He blinks, sure that he can't be imagining it but unwilling to rule much of anything out just yet. His apparent classmate is slumped against the back wall of shelves, long legs folded to fit in the cramped space. Kurapika doesn't recognize him, which is odd, because there aren't that many students in this school, and he knows most of them by appearance at least. A recent transfer, maybe? Whoever he is, he can't stay here….

Sliding a hand up the wall to his right, Kurapika flicks the light switch on. The other student's eyes scrunch tighter, and then blink open, squinting up at Kurapika from behind wireframe glasses that slide down a long nose.

It takes a couple more blinks for the stranger to regain his bearings, and then he seems to realize where he is all at once, sitting bolt upright and wiping drool from the corner of his mouth.

"Um – hi!"

Kurapika frowns, just a little. "What are you doing?"

(Well, that really wasn't polite. He should've probably asked for a name first. But in his defense, the situation has him sufficiently thrown.)

"Oh!" the other boy says, as though he's only just noticed he's doing something that could be considered odd. He scrambles to his feet, awkward elbows bumping shelves as he does. "The door locked behind me, so I was waiting for someone to come along and help, but I guess I fell asleep…."

"I see." He really _doesn't_, but that's easily solved with another question. "Why were you in here in the first place?"

Now that this new student is standing at full height, Kurapika realizes he has to look up much farther than he's used to in order to maintain eye contact. Which is…a little bit irksome. He's not sure why.

The other student adjusts the tie on his uniform, clearing his throat. "I was looking for the office," he explains, "today's my first day here."

Kurapika's brow furrows. "You…thought this closet was the office…?"

"Some asshole redhead gave me directions!"

"…I see," Kurapika says on a sigh. This time he really _does_ see. He'll have to have a word with Hisoka later, no matter how pointless the endeavor will be….

"I'm Leorio!" the taller boy introduces suddenly, thrusting a hand out for Kurapika to shake. Even his fingers are lanky.

"Kurapika." He takes the proffered hand, all-too-aware of how it practically engulfs his own.

Leorio shoots a finger gun at him with his free hand – a gesture Kurapika was pretty sure real actual people didn't do until right this second. "Thanks for saving me," he says, complete with a cheesy, exaggerated wink.

…This day just keeps getting longer.

"No problem."

Rocking on his feet, Leorio tucks his hands into his trouser pockets, casting a glance around the storage closet. "So, uh…do you happen to know where the office actually is?"

Again, Kurapika sighs. "If you give me a minute, I'll be heading there after I pick up toner for the printer…." He trails off, gesturing behind Leorio in the hopes that he'll take the hint.

"Sure, sure."

Hint taken, Leorio shuffles past him at the same time as Kurapika slips around. Brushing this close to him, Kurapika picks out an almost overbearing cologne; it tickles his nose to a sneeze, even, which he muffles into his sleeve.

"Bless you."

"Thanks." And then, Kurapika makes a very damning mistake – though he doesn't know it at the time – by asking: "Could you hold the door open? As you've experienced, it sometimes locks on its own when shut."

"Can do!" Leorio lodges his tall frame against the door, leaning on it just enough to keep it propped open.

That issue taken care of (or so Kurapika thinks), Kurapika stands on his toes, stretching up as far as he can. He always forgets that the toner is kept on the top shelf, and the teaching staff always collectively forgets that he can't _quite_ reach….

"Need help?" Leorio offers.

"If you wouldn't mind," Kurapika accepts, because it beats climbing the shelves. "Just make sure you leave something in the door so it doesn't –"

He's interrupted by the soft _click_ of the door slipping all-the-way shut.

Silence reigns after that. Kurapika freezes with his hands poised on a shelving unit, aiming an exasperated look over his shoulder at Leorio as he watches it dawn on him what he's just done.

"…Whoops," Leorio says at length.

"Maybe it's not locked," Kurapika holds out hope.

"Y-yeah!" So Leorio turns to try it –

– But the handle sticks fast.

"Well." That's about all Kurapika can say, really. He drops his hands off the shelf, letting them fall to his sides as he turns on a heel to face Leorio. The frown he has isn't too severe, he doesn't think – but he's been told his eyes can be a little scary when he's mad.

Which attests to why Leorio almost-but-not-quite flinches under his gaze. "Sorry! I didn't mean to –"

"It's fine." Kurapika takes a deep breath, only to regret it when the scent of Leorio's cologne (did he step closer at some point?) has him sneezing again. He sniffles a bit. "We'll just have to find a way out of here."

At that, Leorio scoffs. "You think I would've been sleeping in here if there was a way out?"

"Maybe you just didn't find it."

"By all means," Leorio says, stepping away from the door with a flourish. It backfires on him, as he runs smack into a shelf, but still. The mocking intent is clear.

Kurapika slips up past him to examine the door, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. This is _not_ how he wants to spend his day; it's not how he, as class president, can _afford_ to spend his day.

Fortunately, Leorio doesn't seem the brightest, so the possibility that he missed something obvious is high.

The door handle is the same as all the others in the school, a knob that locks from the outside and isn't meant to do so automatically, and so therefore there's no failsafe way to _un_lock it from the _inside_. Internal attachments mean that there are no convenient screws to disassemble the whole doorknob, and anyway, Kurapika would like to avoid ruining school property if he can help it….

"Does your phone have service in here?"

A voice that's slowly starting to become grating breaks Kurapika's train of thought, and he tosses an irritated glance over his shoulder at the culprit. Leorio's got his phone out – a razor thin one that flips open – holding it up toward the ceiling and frowning at the display.

"I don't know," Kurapika says, going back to scrutinizing the doorknob.

"Can you check?"

The doorknob, much like Leorio, is giving Kurapika nothing helpful whatsoever to work with. "It's inappropriate to have your phone on your person during school hours." (He very much ignores the thought that he'd be beyond grateful if he _did_ have it.)

There's some kind of ugly squawking noise from Leorio. "Goody two-shoes!" he accuses. "It's fine in these situations!"

"Well," Kurapika's voice falls cold and hard from his lips, "I wasn't _expecting_ to get locked in a closet."

For all his gracelessness displayed so far, Leorio is at least aware enough to go sheepish at that. An awkward laugh tumbles out of his mouth, an unappealing, "Heheh," sound. "Uh…that's my bad." It is. "Can I help?" He can't.

But Kurapika shuffles sideways anyway, making the most of the mediocre space available just in front of the door. It _is_ Leorio's fault they're stuck in here, after all, might as well give him a chance to make up for it.

Leorio squeezes his lanky frame up next to Kurapika, joining him in his door scrutiny. Though, while Kurapika keeps his focus on the doorknob (admittedly hogging the space), Leorio seems content to focus on the rest of the door.

"Is there a screwdriver in here?"

Barely biting back another sigh, Kurapika glances over at Leorio. Their height difference is magnified by the way Kurapika is crouched, and the way Leorio is stretched to run his fingers over the topmost hinge.

"We are not defacing school property."

"We wouldn't be defacing it!" Leorio balks, raising both eyebrows down at Kurapika. His glasses slip down his nose a little ways, and he nudges them back into place. "It would be fixable!"

Straightening to his full height doesn't do much to make Kurapika feel taller, but at least it'll give Leorio a better view of his disapproving frown. Even if it comes at the cost of bringing them closer together than Kurapika would've liked. "Are you prepared to pay the repair costs?"

At the word 'pay', Leorio flinches, and Kurapika guesses that he's hit some kind of nerve.

An indignant grumble of "No," comes from Leorio, and Kurapika nods sagely.

"I didn't think so."

For a moment, Leorio bristles, grouching under his breath about know-it-alls and loosening his tie until it's barely done up. Kurapika tries to brainstorm around the disruptions, but this closet is close and stuffy and Leorio's cologne has him sneezing again.

"Bless you," Leorio snaps.

"Thank you," Kurapika snaps back. Then tries to give himself a mental shakedown. Taking out his frustrations like this is getting him _nowhere_.

"Can't we like…try to pick the lock?"

Kurapika tries – and this time fails – to resist the urge to roll his eyes. If only Leorio would give him some peace to _think_, Kurapika knows he could get them out of this… "I could easily pick it, yes – but it locks from the _outside_. There's nothing on this side to pick."

"Oh," Leorio says. And then, after a beat: "Wait – what do you mean you could easily pick it? Can you pick locks?"

…Oops. Kurapika hadn't meant to let that detail slip. "Maybe."

"Woah." For a minute, Leorio looks stunned, giving Kurapika a once-over as if seeing him with fresh eyes. "You seem so straight-laced – why d'you know how to do _that_?"

Schoolwide issues that involve gangs of organized lunch money theft rings sometimes require unethical investigation tactics to put an end to, but these aren't stories to discuss with people you've only just met. _Especially_ new students.

"That's irrelevant," Kurapika settles on.

And anyway, on the subject of lock-picking…that gives him an idea, something that just might work. He pats his own pockets down, only to frown when he realizes he's made a foolish error very unlike himself. Today of all days.

"But –"

"Do you have your student ID card?"

Leorio blinks at him, not having the privilege of being inside Kurapika's head to follow his train of thought, and therefore still stuck on the whole unexplained picking locks talent thing. "What?"

"Your student ID." Kurapika holds up a hand, thumb and forefinger bent in the vague outline of a card shape. "Do you have it?"

"…"

The silence isn't promising.

"Y'know," Leorio rubs the back of his head, "funny story."

Kurapika bets it isn't.

"I was on my way to the office to go and get it, along with my schedule, seeing as I just transferred here and all, when I wound up –"

"Locked in here," Kurapika finishes the decidedly _not_ funny story for him, deadpan.

Snapping his fingers, Leorio ends the gesture in a point directed at Kurapika's face. "Got it in one!"

This time, Kurapika doesn't bother holding back his latest eye roll. He has half a mind to swat away Leorio's hand, too, but manages to contain himself.

"Don't give me that!" Leorio sounds downright outraged, temper flipping in the blink of an eye, finger jabbing too-close to Kurapika's face. "It's not my fault I'm new! Why d'you need it, anyway?"

"_Because_," Kurapika deigns to explain, "there's a way to pick the lock from in here, but I need a card like that."

"Can't you just use yours?"

Oh, Kurapika would absolutely _love_ to use his own card for this! He'd like nothing more than to get himself out of this trouble, without Leorio's help, and then leave this new student's entire obnoxious self locked up in this closet until the end of time.

…As it is, though….

"I don't happen to have it on me."

A snorting sort of laugh chokes out of Leorio's throat. "Oh?"

Suddenly, Kurapika can't bring himself to watch Leorio's long and not-at-all obnoxiously handsome face, with its smug, surprised amusement plastered over it clear as day. Instead, he aims his glare up at the printer toner. "I left it in the student council room," he explains, "on accident."

What follows is another burst of laughter from Leorio, this one more like delirious giggling, no more attractive than any of his other laughs. "You're on the student council?"

Kurapika purses his lips. "I'm the president," he corrects, before common sense can stop him.

If the tiny space were to permit it, Kurapika is sure Leorio would be doubled over right about now. He's scrunched up as much as his tall frame will allow, again putting him too close to Kurapika, laughing in what _has_ to be an exaggerated fashion.

(It does _not_ have Kurapika's lips trying to twitch into a smile with the infectiousness of it all. This predicament is _not_ funny. Leorio is _not_ awkwardly charming. He's _annoying_.)

"The student council president?" Leorio wheezes, once he's had his fun, wiping imaginary tears. "And you're stuck in here with me? No student ID to break us out?"

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be locked in here in the –" damn it all, that cologne wrenches another sneeze out of Kurapika, " – in the first place."

"Bless you," Leorio says offhandedly, looking more pleased with himself than he has any right to be.

Kurapika absolutely _must_ burst his bubble. "We're stuck here until someone comes along, you do realize that, right?"

Bubble sufficiently burst, Leorio shoves a frustrated hand into his hair with a groan. "How many times do I have to apologize for that?!"

"Until you mean it."

"I _do_ mean it!"

That, Kurapika doesn't buy. He levels Leorio with as harsh of a glare as he can muster, hoping that the way he sniffles away another sneeze doesn't detract from its effectiveness.

"I do," Leorio insists, frown pulling at his face.

Kurapika is too irritated to press this matter further. He meets Leorio's frown with one of his own. "Might as well get comfortable. We'll probably be here a while."

To Kurapika's horror, Leorio takes that seriously. Amidst more grumbling, he yanks his tie all the way free, and shrugs off his blazer. The dress shirt of their school uniform stretches over the broadness of his shoulders as he folds the clothes and sets them down on top of the nearest box.

Then he _undoes_ the top couple buttons of said dress shirt.

"It won't be that long," he grouches to himself, _rolling up his sleeves _to reveal impressive forearms. "To the end of the school day at the latest…."

And Kurapika _really_ shouldn't be staring. This new student is an irritant. A wrench in the works of Kurapika's carefully crafted day of responsibilities.

…Being bizarrely…_attractive_…doesn't make any of what happened okay. It doesn't erase how he singlehandedly uprooted Kurapika's entire afternoon.

In fact, it ought to be added to Leorio's list of crimes.

Listening to Hisoka's directions, falling asleep in a supply closet, getting Kurapika locked in said closet with him, having sneeze-inducing cologne, possessing a bad personality, being handsome…quite the list of transgressions.

….

Kurapika has been in this closet far too long. It's too hot in here. Not enough oxygen. _Something_. And it's only made worse by his _sneezing_ –

"You got allergies or something?"

That (admittedly innocent) question is the last straw.

"Allergies?" Kurapika asks, lowering his arm from where he'd covered his mouth on his latest sneeze. He steps forward, fully aware that he's crowding Leorio, and that the sweat dripping down Leorio's face is mixing with his awful cologne to make the sneezing hazard higher, and that this is wildly inappropriate – but he doesn't _care_ about any of that. "You're asking if I have _allergies_?!"

Leorio gulps, but stands his ground despite his obvious wariness. "Yeah."

"I'm allergic to _you_, you absolute –"

"_Me?!_"

"Yes – _you!_ Your cologne is more overbearing than your personality!" As if to demonstrate, Kurapika sneezes again.

For half a moment, Leorio gawks – and Kurapika wishes his loss for words would be permanent. "Excuse me?"

With a furious huff, Kurapika balls his hands into fists and dives into a rant that's been working up in his head for what feels like all day (but instead has only been there since the door to the closet locked on them). "I can't believe that instead of my duties as class president, I have to –"

Leorio, ever full of bad manners, interrupts him. Because _of course_ he does. "Well so_rry_ I didn't get locked in somewhere _better_ –"

"Be stuck in here with the likes of you!" Kurapika finishes over him, raising his voice to drown out Leorio's.

"Where someone nicer would find me!" Leorio continues his own thought, screeching by now. It's as ugly a sound as his laughter.

The _audacity_. "I'm plenty nice!" He is! On a normal day, with normal company, he's just –

"I'm _great_ company!"

Kurapika scoffs. "You're completely –"

"Wonderful?" Leaning closer, Leorio sneers right in Kurapika's face. "Charming? Helpful? Handsome?"

"_Helpful_?! You – it's _your fault_ we're stuck here!"

"Well, _you_ –"

Kurapika doesn't mean to do it. He's not sure what comes over him, and if you ask him later, he won't have any more of a clue as to why, even after overthinking it for _days_.

The heated atmosphere is getting to him, is the best he can figure, and their volume is escalating along with their argument and proximity, and he forgets to be reasonable in the face of wanting Leorio to _shut up_ more than anything.

That's it!

He wants Leorio to shut up _so badly_, that he's willing to resort to standing on tiptoe, grabbing his collar, and crushing their mouths together.

…It works, at least.

The effect sticks around even after they part, with Kurapika panting against Leorio's shock-opened mouth, red eyes flashing.

That, of course, is when the door opens.

Kurapika whips his head over to look. A first year stands in the doorway, familiar white hair messy around a stunned face, wireless headphones loose at his neck.

And here Kurapika is. With his hands fisted in Leorio's half-undone shirt.

Leorio, who's still gaping – still staring wide-eyed at Kurapika. Their faces tellingly close.

"Oh," the new arrival – who Kurapika's fogged mind recalls is named Killua – says. "Sorry."

"Wai –"

Before Kurapika can even get the word out, though, Killua is gone, bowing out and closing the door in his wake. It clicks shut with too much finality, and Kurapika deflates as he listens to the sound of retreating footsteps.

"Um," Leorio says.

Only now does Kurapika's face heat up on a blush. Hah. _Fantastic_. He's having trouble unlocking his fingers from Leorio's surely wrinkled collar. There's no way he can turn to face him, stuck staring at the door as his mind whirrs.

"Since, uh…" Leorio clears his throat, clumsy fingers brushing at the back of one of Kurapika's hands. "Since we're stuck here – y'know, again – er, still?" He swallows, awkward laugh making its ugly – alright, okay, its _charming_ reappearance. "D'you wanna maybe…make out?"

With a frustrated groan, Kurapika releases him, sinking down onto his haunches and hiding his red face in his knees.

He's quiet for a long moment, but not getting much thinking done no matter how he tries. When he chances a peek up at Leorio, he sees flushed cheeks, a mouth caught on a lopsided almost-grin, crooked glasses.

Oh, to hell with it.

"…Sure."

* * *

**A/N:** Thanks for reading!


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